That very night, too, Jacqueline slept in the room of the late Madame Hourdequin: the state chamber, with its large bed in the depths of an alcove with red hangings. In this room there stood a wardrobe, a small round table, and an arm-chair of the Voltaire style; while above a little mahogany writing-table there hung some medals, framed under glass, and won by the farmer at agricultural competitions. When La Cognette in her chemise, had mounted on to the conjugal couch, she stretched herself upon it, with her turtle-dove chuckle, spreading out her arms and legs as if to take possession of the entire bed.
On the morrow, when she fell on Jean's neck, he repulsed her. Things having now taken a serious turn, it wasn't proper, and he wouldn't consent any more.
CHAPTER II.
One evening, some days later, Jean was walking back from Cloyes when, a mile or so before reaching Rognes, he was astonished by the mode of progress of a peasant's cart which was going along, ahead of him. It seemed empty. No one sat on the driver's seat, and the horse, left to its own devices, was leisurely jogging back to its stable, being evidently well acquainted with the road. Accordingly, the young man quickly caught it up. He stopped it, and raised himself on tip-toe to look into the vehicle. A man was lying at the bottom—a short, fat old man of sixty, who had fallen backwards, and whose face was so purple that it appeared black.
Such was Jean's surprise that he began to talk aloud:
"Hallo, there! Is he asleep or drunk? Why, if it isn't old Mouche, the father of those two down yonder. Heavens! I think he's kicked the bucket! Well, well, here's a start!"
But, although laid low by a fit of apoplexy, Mouche still breathed, in a short and laboured way. So Jean raised his head and straightened him out; and then sat himself down in front and whipped up the horse, driving the dying man home at a round trot, for fear that he might slip through his fingers.
Just as he turned into the church-square, he perceived Françoise standing before her door. The sight of the young fellow in their cart, driving Coco, dumbfounded her.
"What's up?" she asked.
"Your father's not well."
"Where is he?"
"There. Look!"
She climbed up on the wheel and looked. For a moment she stood there, without seeming to understand, and staring stupidly at that purple face, half of which had been, as it were, wrenched downwards. The night was falling, and a great livid cloud, which turned the sky yellow, lit up the dying man as with the glow of a conflagration.
Then all at once, she burst into sobs, and ran out of sight to prepare her sister.
"Lise! Lise! Oh, my God!"
Jean, on remaining alone, hesitated. Still the old man could not be left lying in the cart. The basement of the house was three steps below ground, on the side of the square; and to descend into that dark hole seemed to him inconvenient. Then he bethought himself that, on the roadway side, to the left, another door opened level into the yard. It was a good-sized yard, enclosed by a quickset hedge; the turbid water of a pool took up two-thirds of it, and two-thirds of an acre of kitchen and fruit garden extended in the rear. Jean left Coco to himself, and the horse, of his own accord, entered and drew up before his stable, near the shed in which were the two cows.
Françoise and Lise ran up with tears and lamentations. The latter, confined four months previously, and now taken by surprise while suckling her infant, had, in her affright, kept him in her arms; and he howled too. Françoise again got on one wheel, while Lise climbed up on the other. Their lamentations grew deafening; and meantime Mouche, at the bottom of the cart, still kept up his laboured wheezing.
"Papa, answer; won't you? Say what's the matter. Oh, dear! what is the matter? Oh, dear! oh, dear! It's in your head, then, since you can't even speak? Papa, papa, do speak; do answer!"
"Come down. He'd better be got out of the trap," said Jean, sagely.
They gave no help, but only screamed the louder. Luckily a neighbour, Madame Frimat, came upon the scene, attracted by the noise. She was a tall, withered, bony old woman, who for two years had been nursing her paralytic husband, supporting him by cultivating in person, with the doggedness of a beast of burden, the single acre or so that they possessed. She was not at all put out, seeming to think the misadventure a matter of course, and she lent a helping hand as a man would have done. Jean took Mouche by the shoulders, and pulled him up until La Frimat was able to catch hold of his legs. Then they carried him into the house.
"Where's he to be put?" asked the old woman.
The two girls, who were following, had lost their wits, and did not know. Their father's room was a small one upstairs, partitioned off from the grain-loft, and it was almost out of the question to carry him up there. Downstairs there was the kitchen, and the large double-bedded room which he had given up to them. In the kitchen it was as dark as pitch. With their arms stiff with exertion, the young man and the old woman waited, not daring to take another step forward for fear of knocking against some piece of furniture.
"Come, something must be settled, anyhow."
Françoise at last lit a candle, and just then the wife of the rural constable, Madame Bécu came in; she had smelt disaster in the air, or had been warned by that occult agency which is wont to carry news through a village in no time.
"Why! what's amiss with the poor fellow?" said she. "Ah! I see; his blood has turned. Quick! Set him on a chair."
But Madame Frimat was of a different opinion. The idea of seating a man who could not hold himself upright! The thing to do was to stretch him on one of his daughters' beds. The discussion was growing keen, when Fanny came in with Nénesse. She had heard about it while buying some vermicelli at Macqueron's, and had come to see what there was to be seen; being at the same time somewhat affected on her cousins' account.
"Perhaps," she declared, "it's best to sit him down, so that the blood may run back."
And so Mouche was huddled on to a chair near the table, on which the candle was burning. His chin drooped upon his chest, his arms and legs hung limp. His left eye had been drawn open by the displacement of that side of his face, and one corner of his twisted mouth wheezed more than the other. Silence fell. Death was taking possession of the damp room, with its floor of trodden earth, its stained walls, and its large gloomy fireplace.
Jean still waited in perplexity, while the two girls and the three women dangled round the old fellow, looking at him.
"Hadn't I better go and fetch the doctor?" the young man ventured to ask.
Madame Bécu nodded her head, but no one else made any reply. If it were to be nothing after all, why incur the expense of a visit? And if it were really the end, what good could the doctor do?
"Vulnerary's a capital thing," said La Frimat.
"I've got some camphorated spirits," murmured Fanny.
"That's a good thing too," declared Madame Bécu.
Lise and Françoise, now in a state of stupor, listened and took no steps at all. The one was nursing her baby, Jules; the other was holding a glass full of water which her father would not drink. Fanny, however, bustled Nénesse, who was held spell-bound by the contorted visage of the dying man.
"Run home and tell them to give you the little bottle of camphorated spirits on the left in the wardrobe. D'ye hear? In the wardrobe on the left. And call at grandfather Fouan's, and at your aunt La Grande's. Tell them that uncle Mouche is taken very bad. Run, run quick!"
The urchin having bounded out of sight, the women continued their dissertations on the case. La Bécu knew a gentleman who had been saved by having the soles of his feet tickled for three hours. La Frimat, remembering that she had some linden-flowers left out of the pennyworth bought the previous winter for her good man, went and fetched it. She was coming back with the little bag, and Lise was lighting a fire, after handing her child to Françoise, when Nénesse re-appeared.
"Grandpapa Fouan had gone to bed. La Grande said that if uncle Mouche hadn't drunk so much he wouldn't have made himself so sick."
Fanny examined the bottle he handed her, and then cried:
"You fool! I told you on the left. You've brought me the Eau de Cologne."
"That's a good thing, too," said La Bécu.
They forced the old man to take a cup of linden-flower tea, by inserting the spoon between his clenched teeth. Then they rubbed his head with Eau de Cologne. And yet he didn't get any better: it was most discouraging. His face had become blacker still. They were obliged to hitch him up on the chair, for he was sinking down, and on the point of tumbling flat on the floor.
"Oh!" muttered Nénesse, who had gone to the door again, "it's going to rain like I don't know what. The sky's a funny sort of colour."
"Yes," said Jean, "I saw a villainous cloud gathering." And, as if brought back to his first idea: "It's no odds. I'll go and fetch the doctor if you like."
Lise and Françoise looked at each other, frightened and anxious. At last the second came to a resolution in the generous impulse of her youth.
"Yes, yes, Corporal. Go to Cloyes and fetch Monsieur Finet. It sha'n't be said that we didn't do our duty."
Coco, in the midst of the bustle, had not even been unharnessed, and Jean had only to jump into the cart. They heard the clink of iron, and the rumble of the wheels. Then La Frimat mentioned the priest; but the others signified by a gesture that enough trouble was already being taken in the matter. And Nénesse having proposed to walk the two miles or so to Bazoches-le-Doyen, his mother lost her temper. A likely thing that she was going to let him trot off on so threatening a night, with that dreadful rust-coloured sky! Besides, as the old man neither heard nor answered, one might as well knock up the priest to minister to a mile-stone.
Ten o'clock struck from the cuckoo-clock of painted wood. Here was a surprise! To think that they had been there more than two hours without effecting anything. But not one of them seemed inclined to stir, they were fascinated by the sight, and resolved to see it out. A ten-pound loaf lay on the bread-box, with a knife. First the girls, racked with hunger despite their anguish, mechanically cut themselves slices of bread, which they unconsciously ate, quite dry. Then the three women followed their example. The bread diminished, and one or the other of them was always cutting and munching. No other candle had been lighted; they omitted even to snuff the one that was burning; and it was not lively, sitting in that poor, gloomy, bare, peasant room, and listening to the death-rattle of the form huddled together near the table.
All at once, half an hour after Jean's departure Mouche tumbled over and fell headlong to the floor. He no longer breathed; he was dead!
"What did I tell you? Only you insisted on sending for the doctor," remarked La Bécu, tartly.
Françoise and Lise, stupefied for a moment, burst out into fresh tears. With an instinctive impulse they had thrown themselves into each other's arms in their tender, sisterly adoration; and in broken phrases they repeated: "Oh, dear! We have only each other now. It's all over; there are only the two of us. What will become of us! Oh, dear!"
But the corpse could not be left on the floor. In a trice La Frimat and La Bécu did everything necessary. As they dared not carry the body, they went and drew a mattress off a bed, brought it, and stretched Mouche out upon it, covering him up to the chin with a sheet. Meanwhile Fanny lit the candles in two other candlesticks, and placed them on the floor in lieu of wax tapers on either side of the head. For the moment all was well, except that Mouche's left eye, although closed three times by one of the women with her thumb, persisted in opening again, and seemed to be looking at everybody from out of the distorted purple face, which contrasted so sharply with the whiteness of the linen.
Lise had determined to put Jules to bed, and the wake began. Three times did Fanny and La Bécu say they were going, as La Frimat had offered to stay the night with the young ones; but they did not go, continuing to talk in low tones, and glancing askance from time to time at the corpse, while Nénesse, who had got possession of the bottle of Eau de Cologne, finished it up by drenching his hands and hair with its contents.
As twelve o'clock struck, La Bécu raised her voice.
"And how about Monsieur Finet, I should like to know! Plenty of time he gives people to die in! More than two hours bringing him here from Cloyes!"
The door leading to the yard was open, and just then a great gust came in, and blew out the candles on either side of the corpse. This terrified them all, and as they re-lit the candles, the tempestuous blast returned with greater fury, while a prolonged howling arose and swelled in the dark depths of the country-side. It might have been the gallop of a devastating army approaching, so loudly did the branches crash, so deep was the wail of the riven fields. They had run to the doorway, and saw a coppery cloud whirl wildly across the livid sky. Suddenly there was a rattle, as it were, of musketry, and a rain of bullets fell lashing and rebounding at their feet.
A cry of ruin and desolation burst from their lips.
"Hail! Hail!"
Pale and aghast at the scourge above them, they stood there watching. It lasted barely six minutes. There were no thunder-claps; but great bluish flashes seemed incessantly to run along the ground in broad phosphoric furrows. The night was not now so gloomy: the hail stones lit it up with numberless pale streaks as if jets of glass had fallen. The noise became deafening: like a discharge of grape shot, like a train rushing at full speed over an endlessly thundering metal bridge. The wind blew furiously, and the obliquely falling stones slashed everything, accumulated and covered the soil with a layer of white.
"Hail! Oh, dear! What a misfortune! Look, look! Exactly like hen's eggs!"
They dared not venture into the yard to pick any up. The violence of the hurricane continued to increase; all the window-panes were broken; and the momentum was such that one hailstone cracked a jug, while others rolled as far as the dead man's mattress.
"There wouldn't be five to the pound," said Madame Bécu, poising them in her hand.
Fanny and La Frimat made a gesture of despair.
"Everything ruined! A massacre!"
It was over. The disastrous roar was heard rapidly passing away, and a death-like silence fell. The sky, in the rear of the cloud, had become as black as ink. A fine close rain streamed noiselessly down. Nothing was now distinguishable on the ground but the thick layer of hailstones: a gleaming sheet that had, as it were, a light of its own, the shimmer of infinite millions of night-lights.
Nénesse having rushed out of doors, returned with a perfect iceberg, an irregular jagged mass bigger than his fist: and La Frimat, who could no longer keep still, was unable to resist the temptation to go and see how things were.
"I'm going to fetch my lantern; I must know what the damage is," she said.
Fanny controlled herself a few minutes longer, prolonging her lamentations. Oh, what a piece of work! What destruction among the vegetables and fruit-trees! The wheat, oats, and barley were not high enough to have suffered much. But the vines! Ah, the vines! And, standing at the door, she peered into the thick, impenetrable night, and quivered in a fever of uncertainty, trying to estimate the mischief, exaggerating it, and imagining that she saw the land riddled with shot and its life oozing from the wounds.
"Hey! my pets," she said at last: "I'll borrow one of your lanterns and run over as far as our vines."
Then she lit one of the two lanterns and disappeared with Nénesse.
La Bécu, who had no land, didn't at heart care a fig. She fetched sighs and apostrophised Heaven, merely out of a habit she had of feebly moaning and melting into tears on all occasions. Nevertheless, curiosity continually took her to the door; and a lively interest fixed her there once for all as soon as she noticed that the village was starred all over with luminous points. Through a gap in the yard, between the cow-house and a shed, the eye could command the whole of Rognes. Doubtless, the hail-storm had awoke the peasants, and they were all seized with the same impatience to take a look at their fields, all too anxious to wait till daylight.
And indeed the lanterns came forth one by one, multiplying and flitting lightly to and fro, in so dense an opacity, that the arms that held them were merely conjectural. But La Bécu, always on the watch, knew the site of every house, and succeeded in putting a name to every lantern.
"There, now! That one's lit in La Grande's house, and that one's coming out of the Fouans', and over yonder it's Macqueron, and next door it's Lengaigne. Bless me, poor souls! it's heart-breaking. Well, so much the worse! I'm off to join them!"
Lise and Françoise remained alone with their father's corpse. The downpour of the rain continued; little moist breezes skimmed along the ground and guttered the candles. The door ought to have been shut, but neither of them thought of it, being themselves absorbed and agitated by the drama outside, despite the mourning in the house. It wasn't enough, then, to have Death at home? The good God was smashing up everything; one didn't so much as know if there would be a bit of bread left to eat.
"Poor father," murmured Françoise; "what a stew he would have been in! Better that he can't see it."
And, as her sister took up the second lantern, she added:
"Where are you going?"
"I'm thinking of the peas and beans. I'll be back directly."
Lise crossed the yard, through the driving rain, and went into the kitchen-garden. There was only Françoise left with the old man, and even she was standing at the doorway, keenly agitated by the flitting of the lantern to and fro. She thought she could hear complaints and sobs. Her heart was wrung.
"Hey! What is it?" she cried. "What's the matter?"
No voice replied, but the lantern ran to and fro more quickly, as if distracted.
"Tell me, are the beans cut down? And the peas, are they hurt? Gracious! And the fruit and salad stock?"
An exclamation of grief, which now distinctly reached her ears, decided her. She caught up her skirts and ran through the rain to join her sister. The dead man remained, deserted, in the empty kitchen, lying rigid under the sheet, between the two dull, smoky wicks. His left eye, still obstinately open, stared at the old joists of the ceiling.
What a ravage had laid that stretch of land desolate! What a lamentation arose from the scene of disaster, half visible in the flickering gleam of the lanterns. Lise and Françoise carried theirs hither and thither, though it was so wet with rain that scarcely any light passed through the panes; and they brought it close to the beds, confusedly distinguishing, in the narrow ring of light, the beans and peas cut down short, the lettuces so chopped and hacked that it was futile even to think of utilising the leaves. The trees, especially, had suffered. The smaller branches and the fruit had been cut off as with knives. The very trunks were splintered and bruised, and the sap was escaping through the holes in the bark. Farther on, among the vines, matters were worse: the lanterns swarmed and leaped, as if maddened, amid groans and oaths. The stocks seemed to have been mown down, and bunches of blossom bestrewed the soil in company with shattered branches and spurs. Not only was the season's crop ruined, but the stems, stripped bare, would decay and die. No one felt the rain. A dog was howling murder, and women were bursting into tears, as on the brink of a grave. Macqueron and Lengaigne, in spite of their rivalry, were lighting each other, visiting each other's ground, and joining in ejaculations of dismay, as each new vision of ruin, wan and short-lived, met their gaze, and then faded again into shadow behind them. Although old Fouan now had no land of his own, he wanted to look on, waxing wroth. By degrees they all flew into a temper. To actually lose the fruit of a year's work in a quarter of an hour! Could it be possible? What had they done to be so punished? There was no security or justice; unreasoning scourges and caprices slew the world. La Grande, in a fury, abruptly picked up some pebbles, and flung them into the air to pierce the heaven she could not discern. And she blasphemously screamed out:
"Hey, up there! Can't you manage to leave us in peace?"
On the mattress in the kitchen, the deserted Mouche was still staring fixedly at the ceiling with his one eye, when two vehicles drew up at the door. Jean had at length brought Monsieur Finet, after waiting for him at his house during nearly three hours; and had returned in the cart, while the doctor had ordered out his gig.
The medical man, tall and thin, with a face jaundiced by stifled ambition, entered roughly. In his heart he loathed this peasant connection, which he held responsible for his mediocrity.
"What, no one here? Things have mended, then."
But perceiving the corpse: "No, too late! Didn't I tell you? I didn't want to come! It's always the same old game: they call me in when they're dead."
This useless summons in the middle of the night annoyed him; and Lise and Françoise, just then returning, put the finishing touch to his exasperation by apprising him that they had waited a couple of hours before sending for him.
"It's you that have killed him, sure enough. Eau de Cologne and linden-flower tea for a fit of apoplexy! How idiotic! And, what's more, no one keeping him company. It's pretty certain he won't see salvation."
"It's because of the hail, sir," stammered Lise, in tears.
Monsieur Finet became interested, and calmed down. Dear, dear! So there's been a hail-storm? By dint of living among the peasantry he had eventually caught their passions. Jean, also, had drawn near; and they both uttered exclamations of amazement, for, in coming from Cloyes, they had not seen a single hailstone. Some spared, and others, half a mile or so off, turned topsy-turvy! Really, what a piece of ill luck to have one's land in the damaged part of the country! Then, as Fanny returned, bringing back the lantern, La Bécu and La Frimat following her, and all the three launching out into grievous and interminable details of the harrowing things they had seen,—the doctor gravely declared:
"It's a calamity, a great calamity. There's no greater calamity for country-folk."
A muffled sound, a kind of bubbling noise, interrupted him. It came from the corpse, lying forgotten between the two candles. They all became silent, and the women crossed themselves.
CHAPTER III.
A month passed by. Old Fouan, appointed guardian to Françoise, who was entering on her fifteenth year, induced the two girls—his ward and Lise, who was the elder by ten years—to let all their land, excepting a strip of meadow, to cousin Delhomme, so that it might be properly cultivated and kept.
Now that the two girls were left alone in the house, without father or mother, they would have had to engage a servant, which would have been ruinous, on account of the increasing price of manual labour. Delhomme, moreover, was simply doing them a service, as he undertook to cancel the lease as soon as either of them married, and a division of the inheritance became necessary.
Lise and Françoise also sold their cousin their horse, which had now become useless, but they kept the two cows, La Coliche and La Rousse, as well as the donkey, Gédéon. Of course they likewise kept their patch of kitchen garden, which it became the province of the elder girl to keep in order, while the younger one looked after the live stock. To be sure, that made plenty of work; but they were hale and hearty, thank God! and would soon get through with it.
The first few weeks were very burdensome, for there was the damage of the hail-storm to be repaired, the soil to be tilled, the vegetables to be replanted. This it was that induced Jean to lend a helping hand. An intimacy had sprung up between him and the girls since the day he had brought their dying father home. The day after the burial he called and inquired after them. Next he came and chatted, growing gradually familiar and obliging, insomuch that one afternoon he took the spade out of Lise's hands to finish the digging of a bed. Thenceforth he devoted to them, in a friendly way, the time that was not taken up by his work at the farm. He belonged to the house, to that old patriarchal house of the Fouans, built three centuries back by an ancestor, and honoured by the whole family with a sort of worship. When Mouche used to complain of having had the worst lot in the distribution of the property, accusing his brother and sister of having swindled him, they answered: "And how about the house? Hadn't he got the house?"
A poor, dilapidated house it was, settling down on its foundations, cracked and rickety, patched up everywhere with odds and ends of plank and plaster. It had obviously been originally constructed of rough stones and clay; subsequently, two walls had been rebuilt with mortar; and finally, towards the beginning of the century, the owners had reluctantly replaced the thatch with a roofing of small slates, now rotten. Thus it had lasted, and thus it still held out; sunk a yard deep in the earth, as all houses were built in the olden time, doubtless for the purpose of ensuring greater warmth. The inconvenience of it was that, in heavy storms, they were flooded with water; and it was of no avail to sweep the hardened soil that composed the cellar-like floor; there was always a remnant of mud in the corners.
The house had been planned, however, with particular artfulness, its back being turned towards the far-stretching northern plain of La Beauce, whence blew the terrible winter winds. On that side, in the kitchen, the only opening was a narrow window, barricaded by a shutter, on a level with the street; while on the southern side, one found the other windows and the door. The place suggested one of those fisher-huts on the sea-shore, which do not expose a single chink to the ocean waves. The winds of La Beauce had battered the house aslant, so that it bent forward like an old broken-backed hag.
Jean was soon familiar with every corner of it. He helped to clean up the room of the deceased; that corner cut off from the granary by a mere plank partition, and containing nothing but an old chest full of straw serving as a bed, with a chair and a table. Downstairs he did not go beyond the kitchen, for he shrank from following the two sisters into their own room, where, as the door was always on the swing, one could see the double-bedded alcove, the large walnut wardrobe, and a superbly-carved round table, doubtless a relic formerly stolen from the château. There existed yet another room behind this, but it was so damp that the father had preferred to sleep upstairs. They were reluctant even to store potatoes in it, for they began immediately to germinate. They lived in the kitchen, a huge smoky room where, for three centuries, many generations of Fouans had succeeded each other. It was redolent of sustained toil and stinted food, of the constant efforts of people who, while working themselves to death, had just managed not to starve, never having a halfpenny more in December than they had in January. A door that opened flush into the cow-house brought the cattle into companionship with the occupants, and when that door was shut, the animals could still be seen and watched through a pane of glass let into the wall. Next there came the stable, where Gédéon now remained by himself; then a shed and a wood-house; and there was no need to go out of doors, for you entered every place in succession. Outside, the rains replenished the pond, which furnished them with water for the cattle and for domestic use. Every morning they had to go down to the Aigre to bring up drinking-water.
Jean felt happy there, without troubling his head to inquire what the attraction was. Lise, who gave him a good welcome, was as gay and buxom as ever. Nevertheless, she was already looking older than twenty-five; indeed, she was growing very plain, more especially since her confinement. But she had good stout arms, and applied herself to her work with such zest—bustling about, shouting, and laughing—that it was delightful to look at her. Jean treated her as a grown-up woman, and did not thee and thou her as he did Françoise, whose fifteen years made her seem to him quite a mere child. The younger girl, whose good looks out-of-door life and hard work had not yet had time enough to spoil, retained her pretty, long face, with its slight, headstrong forehead, its dark, pensive eyes, and its thick lips, shaded by a precocious down. Although deemed a child, she was a woman also; and apt to conceive, as her sister used to say, without being tickled very closely. It was Lise who had brought her up, their mother being dead; and thence came their great fondness, active and noisy on the part of the elder sister, and passionate and restrained on that of the younger one.
Françoise was reputed to have a strong will of her own. Injustice exasperated her. When she had said: "This is mine, and that is yours," she would have gone to the scaffold rather than retract; and, putting everything else aside, she adored Lise, from a notion that such adoration was Lise's due. Withal, she was tractable and very good, free from bad thoughts, and only tormented by her early womanhood, which made her nerveless, slightly dainty, and lazy. One day she also began to address Jean in the second person singular, he being quite a middle-aged and kindly-natured friend, who was wont to draw her out, and sometimes tease her; telling falsehoods of malice aforethought, and defending injustice for the fun of seeing her choke with rage.
One Sunday afternoon in June, the heat already being intense, Lise was engaged in the kitchen garden, hoeing some peas and nipping them round. She had placed Jules under a plum-tree, where he had dozed off to sleep. The sun was beating straight down upon her, and she was puffing as she bent forward to pull up some weeds, when a voice came from behind the hedge:
"What, what! No rest even on Sunday?"
She had recognised the voice, and drew herself up, with red arms and a flushed face, but laughing through it all.
"No, indeed! The work doesn't do itself on a Sunday any more than on a week-day!"
It was Jean. He skirted the hedge, and came in through the yard.
"Let that alone; I'll soon polish off your work!"
However, she refused. She would soon have finished. And then, if she didn't do that, she would be doing something else. There was never a chance of being idle. Although she got up at four o'clock in the morning, and sat sewing till late in the evening by candlelight, she never got to the end of it all.
So as not to oppose her, Jean sat himself in the shade of the neighbouring plum-tree, being careful not to sit upon Jules. He watched Lise, stooping double again, and every now and then pulling down her petticoat, which kept working up behind and showing her fat legs; and then with her head close to the ground, she worked away with her arms without any fear of the rush of blood that swelled her neck.
"Lucky for you," he said, "that you're sturdily built!"
She took some pride in that, and laughed complacently without getting up. He laughed too, conscientiously admiring her, thinking her as strong and energetic as a man. No improper desire was suggested to him by her attitude, by her tense calves, by this woman on all fours, sweating and smelling like an animal in heat. He was simply thinking that with limbs like that one could get through a rare lot of work. It was quite certain that, in a household, a woman of that build would be worth as much as her husband.
No doubt some association of ideas worked in him, for he involuntarily blurted out a piece of news which he had resolved to keep to himself.
"I saw Buteau the day before yesterday."
Lise slowly rose up. But she had no time to question him, for Françoise—who had heard Jean's voice, and who, with her arms bare and white with milk, was now coming from the dairy at the further end of the cow-house—flew at once into quite a temper.
"Oh, you've seen him? The cad!"
Her antipathy had increased. She could never now hear her cousin mentioned without being stirred by one of her gusts of honest indignation, as if she had had a personal injury to avenge.
"Certainly he's a cad," declared Lise calmly; "but it don't do any good to say so at this time of day."
She had stuck her arms a-kimbo, and now in a serious voice she asked:
"And what's Buteau got to say for himself?"
"Why, nothing," replied Jean, with some embarrassment, sorry that he hadn't kept a quiet tongue in his head. "We spoke of his affairs, on account of his father giving out everywhere that he'll disinherit him. Buteau says there's no hurry about that, for the old man's hearty enough, and that, anyway, he don't care a curse."
"Does he know that Hyacinthe and Fanny have signed the deed, whether or no, and that they're both in possession of their shares?"
"Yes, he knows; and he knows, too, that old Fouan has let his son-in-law, Delhomme, the share that he, Buteau, wouldn't have. He knows, also, that Monsieur Baillehache was in such a fury that he took an oath he'd never again have the lots drawn for before seeing the papers signed. Oh, yes; he knows that it's all over."
"Ah! And he said nothing?"
"No, he said nothing."
Lise stooped down in silence, walked on a bit, pulling up some weeds and showing nothing save the full rotundity of her behind; then she turned her neck round, and added, with her head down: "It comes to this, Corporal, if you want to know, I shall have to keep Jules, and that'll be the end of it."
Jean, who had heretofore held out some hopes, nodded.
"Faith! you're perhaps right."
He glanced at Jules, whom he had forgotten. The brat still slept, swathed in his long-clothes, with his little motionless face bathed in light. That was the awkward part of it, that urchin! Otherwise, why shouldn't he have married Lise, now she was free? The idea came to him all at once, then and there, as he watched her working. Perhaps he loved her. Perhaps it was the pleasure of seeing her that brought him so much to the house. None the less was he surprised, not having desired her, not even having jested with her, as he had jested with Françoise, for instance. And, pat, as he raised his head, he saw the latter standing rigid and furious in the sunshine, with her eyes so strangely ablaze with passion that he was enlivened even in the agitation of his new discovery. Just then the sound of a trumpet, a strange topsy-turvy roll-call, rang out; and Lise, leaving her peas, exclaimed:
"Why, here comes Lambourdieu! I want to order a hood of him."
On the road, on the other side of the hedge, there appeared a dumpy little man, blowing a trumpet, and walking ahead of a long vehicle drawn by a grey horse. It was Lambourdieu, a shopkeeper from Cloyes, who had added, bit by bit, millinery, drapery, shoemaking, and even ironmongery to his novelty business. He went from village to village, within a radius of five or six leagues, with a regular bazaar. The peasants had ended by buying everything from him, from their saucepans to their wedding clothes. His vehicle was made to open out and turn back, displaying rows of drawers, and enough goods to stock a whole shop.
When Lambourdieu had taken the order for the hood, he added:
"In the meantime you don't happen to want a fine silk handkerchief?"
So saying he drew out of a box some gorgeous red gold-patterned handkerchiefs, and swished them up and down in the sunlight.
"There you are! Three francs each! It's giving them away. Five francs for the pair!"
Lise and Françoise, to whom they had been handed over the hawthorn hedge, on which Jules's napkins were drying, hankered after them. But they were sensible girls; they had no need of them, and why spend money? They were indeed handing them back, when Jean suddenly made up his mind to take Lise, baby and all. So, in order to precipitate matters, he called out to the young woman:
"No, no! Keep it. I offer it you! Oh, you wouldn't pain me by refusing: it's out of pure friendship, to be sure!"
He had said nothing to Françoise, and as she still held out her handkerchief to the dealer, he glanced at her, and felt a pang of grief as he fancied he saw her cheek pale and her lips quiver with pain.
"You, too, stupid! Keep it. Nay, I insist. None of that self-will of yours!"
He struggled with the two sisters who laughingly defended themselves. Lambourdieu had already held out his hand, across the hedge, for his five francs. And away he went. The horse behind him started off with the long vehicle, and the hoarse flourishes of the trumpet died away as the road wound out of sight.
Jean had all at once taken it into his head to push matters on with Lise, and pop the question. But an accident prevented this. The stable-door had no doubt been badly fastened, for suddenly they saw the donkey, Gédéon, valiantly chewing some carrot tops in the kitchen garden. This donkey, big, sturdy, and russet-coloured, with a large grey cross on his spine, was full of artfulness, and quite a wag in his way. He was very good at lifting latches with his mouth, was wont to fetch bread out of the kitchen, and by the style in which he wagged his long ears when he was reproached with his vices, it was obvious that he understood. As soon as he saw himself discovered he put on an indifferent, easy air; then, on being threatened and waved off, he moved away; only, instead of going back into the yard, he trotted along the walks to the bottom of the garden. Then a regular pursuit set in; and when Françoise had at length caught him, he drew himself together and huddled his head and legs against his body, as if to increase his weight, and make slower progress. He was impervious to everything, whether in the shape of kicks or blandishments. Indeed, Jean had to intervene, and hustle him from behind with his man's strength; for Gédéon, since he had been under the management of the two women, had conceived the most hearty contempt for them. Jules had awoke at the noise and was now howling. The opportunity for popping the question was altogether lost, and Jean had to leave without speaking.
A week went by. A great shyness had come upon the young man, who had now lost heart. Not that the transaction seemed to him disadvantageous; contrariwise, he had, on reflection, become more deeply conscious of its advantages. Each side could not do otherwise than gain. If he had nothing, she was encumbered with her infant. That equalised matters. This was no sordid calculation on his part. He argued as much for her happiness as for his own. Then, again, marriage, by taking him away from the farm, would rid him of Jacqueline, who still worried him, and to whom he still yielded out of fleshly weakness. So at last he made up his mind, and waited for an opportunity to declare himself, conning the words he meant to say, for even regimental life had left him somewhat a ninny with women.
At last, one day at about four o'clock, he slipped away from the farm and went to Rognes, resolved to speak. This was the time when Françoise led her cows to evening pasture, and he had chosen it so as to be alone with Lise. But he was dismayed, at the outset, by a great annoyance. La Frimat was established there in her character of obliging neighbour, helping the younger woman to scald the linen in the kitchen.
The sisters had scoured it on the evening before, and since the morning the ash liquor, scented with orris root, had been boiling in a cauldron hanging from the pot-hook over a clear, poplar wood fire. With bare arms, and her skirts tucked up, Lise, with the aid of a yellow earthen jug, was drawing the water off and wetting the linen, with which the bucking-tub was filled—the sheets at the bottom, then the house-cloths, then the body linen, and, at the top of all, some other sheets. La Frimat was not of much use; but she stopped to gossip, allowing herself that recreation, and contenting herself, every now and then, with removing and emptying into the cauldron the pail which stood under the tub to catch the lye, that kept draining away.
Jean waited patiently, hoping she would leave. She did not do so, however; but went on talking of her poor paralytic husband, who could now only move one hand. It was a great affliction. They had never been well off; but, when he could still work, he rented land which he turned to account, whereas now she had a world of trouble to cultivate by herself the patch that was their own. She struggled her hardest; collecting horse dung from the roads as manure, for they kept no animals; tending her salad stock, beans, and peas, plant by plant; and watering even her three plum and two apricot trees. The result was that she made an enormous profit out of the ground; and started every Saturday for the Cloyes market, staggering under the burden of two tremendous baskets, without reckoning the heavy vegetables which a neighbour conveyed for her in his cart. She rarely returned without two or three five-franc pieces, particularly in the fruit season. Her constant grievance was the lack of manure. Neither the horse dung, nor the sweepings from the few rabbits and hens she kept, made a sufficient supply. She had come at length to utilising the excrements of her old man and herself, that human manure so much despised, which provokes disgust even in the country. This had got abroad, and people chaffed her about it, and dubbed her Mother Caca—a nickname which did her a deal of harm at the market; she had seen shopkeepers' wives turn with aversion and disgust from her superb carrots and cabbages. Despite her great mildness, this set her beside herself with fury.
"Come, now, tell me—you, Corporal—is it reasonable? Isn't it permissible to use all that the good God has put in our way? And then to go and say that the dung of animals is cleaner! No; it's jealousy! Folks have a spite against me in Rognes, because the vegetables grow more vigorously on my ground. Tell me, Corporal, does it disgust you?"
Jean replied, in embarrassment: "Well, I don't find it exactly appetising. One ain't used to it. I daresay though, that it's only fancy."
This frankness threw the old woman into despair. Though she was not habitually a tale-bearer, she could not restrain her bitterness.
"Oh, that's it, is it? They've already set you against me. Ah, if you only knew how spiteful they are, if you had any idea of what they say about you!"
Then she let loose the gossip of Rognes about the young man. To begin with, they had execrated him because he was an artisan, and sawed and planed wood, instead of tilling the ground. Then, when he had taken to the plough, they had taxed him with taking the bread out of other people's mouths, by coming into a district that wasn't his own. Did any one know where he came from? Hadn't he done some evil deed at home, that he didn't even dare to go back there? Then they spied upon his intercourse with La Cognette, and asserted that some fine night the two of them would administer a bowl of devil's broth to Hourdequin, and rob him.
"Oh, the blackguards!" muttered Jean, who became pale with indignation.
Lise, who was drawing a jugful of boiling lye from the cauldron, started laughing at the mention of La Cognette, a name she sometimes twitted him with in jest.
"And since I've begun, I'd better make an end of it," pursued La Frimat. "Well, there's no kind of abomination they don't talk about, since you began visiting here. Last week—wasn't it?—you presented them both with silk neckerchiefs, which they were seen wearing on Sunday at mass. The filthy beasts say that you go to bed with the two of them!"
This settled matters. Trembling, but resolute, Jean got up and said:
"Listen, my good woman. I will make reply in your presence, which shall not stand in my way. I will ask Lise if she will consent to my marrying her. You hear me ask, Lise? and if you say yes, you will make me very happy."
She was just then emptying her jug into the bucking-tub. She did not hurry, but finished carefully watering the linen. Then, with her arms bare and moist with steam, becoming quite grave, she looked him in the face.
"So you're in earnest?"
"Thoroughly in earnest."
She did not seem surprised. It was natural. Only she did not answer yes or no; there was evidently something on her mind which annoyed her.
"You needn't say no on account of La Cognette," resumed he, "because La Cognette——"
She cut him short with a gesture. She was well aware that all the larking at the farm was of no consequence.
"There is also the fact that I've absolutely nothing but my skin to bring you; whereas, you own this house and some land."
Again she waved her arm, as if to say that in her position, with a child, she agreed with him in thinking that things were evenly balanced.
"No, no! it's not that," she declared at length. "Only there's Buteau."
"But since he refuses?"
"That's certain. And now there's no sentiment in the matter, for he's behaved too badly. But, all the same, Buteau must be consulted."
Jean reflected for a good minute. Then, very sensibly, he replied:
"As you please. It's due to the child."
La Frimat, who was gravely emptying the pail of drainings into the cauldron, thought herself called upon to approve the step—albeit favourable to Jean, the honest fellow; he surely was neither pig-headed nor brutal—and she was delivering herself to this effect, when Françoise was heard outside, returning with the two cows.
"I say, Lise," she cried, "come and look. La Coliche has hurt her foot."
They all went out, and Lise, at the sight of the limping animal, with her left fore-foot bruised and bleeding, flew into a sharp passion—one of those surly bursts with which she used to sweep down upon her sister when the latter was little, and happened to be in fault.
"Another of your pieces of neglect, eh? You, no doubt, dropped off to sleep on the grass, the same as you did the other day?"
"I assure you I didn't. I don't know what she can have done. I tied her to the stake, and she must have caught her foot in the cord."
"Hold your tongue, liar and good-for-nothing! You'll get killing my cow some day."
Françoise's black eyes flashed fire. She was very pale, and indignantly stammered out:
"Your cow, your cow! You might, at least, say our cow."
"Our cow, indeed? A chit like you with a cow!"
"Yes, half of all that's here is mine. I've a right to take half and destroy it if it amuses me to do so!"
The two sisters stood facing each other, hostile and threatening. It was the first painful quarrel in the course of their long fondness. This question of meum and tuum left them both smarting: the one exasperated by the rebellion of her younger sister, the other obstinate and violent under a sense of injustice. The elder gave way, and went back into the kitchen, so as to restrain herself from boxing her sister's ears. When Françoise, having housed her cows, re-appeared, and went to the pan to cut herself a slice of bread, there was an awkward silence.
Lise, however, had calmed down. The sight of her sister's sullen resistance was now an annoyance to her, and she was the first to speak, thinking to make an end of it by an unexpected piece of news.
"Do you know," she asked, "Jean wants to marry me, and has proposed?"
Françoise, who was standing by the window eating her bread, remained indifferent, and did not even turn round.
"What odds does that make to me?"
"The odds it makes to you," replied Lise, "are that you'd have him for a brother-in-law, and I want to know if you'd like him?"
Françoise shrugged her shoulders.
"Like or dislike, him or Buteau, what's the good? So long as I don't have to sleep with him. Only, if you want to know, the whole thing is hardly decent."
And she went outside to finish her bread in the yard.
Jean, feeling rather uncomfortable, affected to laugh, as at the whims of a spoilt child; while La Frimat declared that in her young days a wench like that would have been whipped till the blood came. As for Lise, she remained a moment silent and serious, absorbed once more in her washing. Then she wound up by saying:
"Well, Corporal, we'll leave it like that. I don't say no, and I don't say yes. The hay-making is come: I shall see our people; I'll make inquiries, and find out how things stand. And then we'll settle something. Will that do?"
"That'll do!"
He held out his hand, and shook the one she gave him. From her whole person, steeped in warm steam, there exuded a true housewifely scent: a scent of wood-ash perfumed with orris.
CHAPTER IV.
For the last two days Jean had been driving the mowing-machine over the few acres of meadow belonging to La Borderie, on the banks of the Aigre. From daybreak till night the regular click of the blades had been heard, and that morning he was getting to the end. The last swaths were falling into line behind the wheels, forming a layer of fine, soft, pale-green herbage. The farm having no hay-making machine, he had been commissioned to engage two haymakers: Palmyre, who worked to the utmost of her strength and harder than a man; and Françoise, who had got herself engaged out of caprice, finding amusement in the occupation. Both of them had come with him at five o'clock, and, with their long forks, had laid out the mulons: little heaps of half-dried grass which had been gathered together over night, by way of protecting it from the night-dews. The sun had risen in a clear glowing sky cooled by a breeze. It was the very weather to make good hay in.
After breakfast, when Jean returned with his haymakers, the hay of the first acre mowed was finished. He felt it and found it dry and crisp.
"I say," cried he, "we'll give it just another turn, and to-night we'll begin the stacking."
Françoise, in a grey linen dress, had knotted over her head a blue handkerchief, one edge of which flapped on her neck, while two corners fluttered loosely over her cheeks, and shaded her face from the sun's brilliant rays. With a swing of her fork she took the grass and flung it up, while the wind blew out of it a kind of golden dust. As the blades fluttered, a strong subtle scent arose from them: the warm scent of cut grass and withered flowers. She had grown very hot, walking on amid the continuous fluttering, which put her in high spirits.
"Ah, my child," said Palmyre, in her doleful voice, "it's easy to see you're young. When night comes, you'll feel your arms stiff."
They were not alone, for all Rognes was mowing and making hay in the meadows around them. Delhomme had got there before daybreak, for the grass, when wet with dew, is tender to cut, like spongy bread; whereas it toughens in proportion as the sun grows hotter. At that moment, one distinctly heard its resistant whir under the scythe, which, held by Delhomme, swept restlessly to and fro. Nearer, in fact contiguous with the grass of the farm, there were two bits of land, belonging one to Macqueron and the other to Lengaigne. In the first, Berthe, in a genteel dress with little flounces, and a straw hat, had come in attendance on the haymakers, by way of recreation, but she was already tired, and remained leaning on her fork in the shade of a willow. In the other field, Victor, who was mowing for his father, had just sat down, and, with his anvil between his knees, was beating at his scythe. For ten minutes nothing had been distinguishable, amid the deep thrilling silence of the air, save the persistent hurried taps of the hammer on the steel.
Just then Françoise came near to Berthe.
"You've had enough of it, eh?" asked the former.
"More or less. I'm beginning to feel tired. You see, when one isn't used to it."
Then they chatted, whispering about Suzanne, Victor's sister, whom the Lengaignes had sent to a dressmaking establishment at Châteaudun, and who, after six months, had fled to Chartres to live "gay." It was said she had run off with a notary's clerk; and all the girls in Rognes whispered the scandal and speculated on the details. Living gay to them meant orgies of gooseberry syrup and Seltzer water, in the midst of a seething crowd of men, dozens of whom waited to court you, in Indian file, in the back shops of wine-sellers.
"Yes, my dear, that's how it is. Isn't she going it?"
Françoise, being younger, stared in stupefaction.
"Nice kind of amusement!" she said at last. "But unless she comes back the Lengaignes will be all alone, as Victor has been drawn for the conscription."
Berthe, who espoused her father's quarrel, shrugged her shoulders. A lot Lengaigne cared. His only regret was that the child hadn't stopped at home to be turned up, and so bring some custom to his shop. Hadn't an uncle of hers, an old man of forty, had her already, before she went to Châteaudun, one day when they were peeling carrots together. And, in a lower whisper, Berthe gave the exact words and circumstances. Françoise, bending double, was suffocated with laughter, it seemed so funny to her.
"Gracious goodness! How stupid to do things like that!"
Then resuming her work she withdrew, raising forkfuls of grass and shaking them in the sun. The persistent hammering on the steel was still heard. Some minutes later, as she came near to where the young man was sitting, she spoke to him.
"So you're going to be a soldier?"
"Oh, in October. Plenty of time yet; there's no hurry."
She struggled against her desire to question him about his sister, but she spoke of her despite herself.
"Is it true what they say, that Suzanne is now at Chartres?"
He, completely indifferent, made answer:
"I suppose so! She seems to enjoy it."
Then, in the distance, seeing Lequeu, the schoolmaster, who was seemingly strolling down by chance, he resumed:
"Hullo! There's somebody after the Macqueron girl. What did I tell you? He's stopping and poking his face into her hair. Get along with you, you old nincompoop! You may sniff round her, but you'll never get anything but the smell!"
Françoise began laughing again, and Victor pursued the family vendetta by falling foul of Berthe. No doubt the schoolmaster wasn't worth much: a bully who cuffed children, a sly-boots whose opinions nobody knew, capable of toadying the girl to get her father's money. But, then, Berthe was no better than she should be, with all her fine town-bred airs. It was no use her wearing flounced skirts and velvet bodices, and stuffing out her behind with table-napkins; the underneath was none the better. Quite the reverse, indeed, for she was up to snuff; she'd learnt more by being brought up at the Châteaudun school than by stopping at home to mind the cows. No fear of her getting herself let in for a child; she preferred to ruin her constitution in solitude.
"How do you mean?" asked Françoise, who did not understand.
He made a gesture, whereupon she became serious, and said, unreservedly:
"That's how it is, then, that she's always saying dirty things, and rubbing herself up against you."
Victor had begun beating his blade again; and, tapping between each phrase, he went on saying some very improper things about Berthe.
These set Françoise off into another fit of mirth; and she only calmed down, and went on hay-making, on seeing her sister Lise on the road coming towards the meadow. Lise went up to Jean, and explained that she had settled to go and see her uncle about Buteau. For the last three days that step had been agreed upon between them, and she promised to come back and tell him the answer. When she went off, Victor was still tapping, and Françoise, Palmyre, and the other women were still flinging the grass in the dazzling light of the vast bright sky. Lequeu was very obligingly giving a lesson to Berthe, thrusting, raising, and lowering her fork as stiffly as a soldier at drill. Afar off, the mowers advanced unceasingly, with a constant, steady motion, swinging on their loins, and with their scythes perpetually sweeping to and fro.
For an instant Delhomme stopped and stood upright, towering above the others. From the cow-horn, full of water, that hung at his belt, he had taken his hone, and was sharpening his scythe with a bold, rapid gesture. Then he bent his back again, and the sharpened steel was heard whizzing still more keenly and bitingly over the meadow.
Lise had arrived at the Fouans' house. At first she was afraid there was no one at home, the place seemed so dead. Rose had parted with her two cows; the old man had just sold his horse; there were no signs of animals, no work, nothing stirring in the empty buildings and yard. Nevertheless the door yielded to her touch; and on entering the common room, which was gloomy and silent amid all the mirth out-of-doors, Lise found old Fouan standing up and finishing a bit of bread and cheese, while his wife was idly seated and looking at him.
"Good morning to you, aunt. Everything going on satisfactorily?"
"Why, yes!" answered the old woman, brightening up at the visit. "Now we are gentlefolks, we have only to take a holiday all day long."
Lise tried to make herself agreeable to her uncle too. "And the appetite's all right, it seems?" said she.
"Oh!" he answered, "it isn't that I'm hungry. Only it's something to do if one eats a bit now and then, it helps to pass the day."
He seemed so dull that Rose started off into an enthusiastic account of their happiness in not having to do any work. True enough, they had earned it well: it was not a bit too soon to see others running about while they lived on their income. Getting up late, twiddling their thumbs, not caring a pin for wind and weather, not having a single care—ah! it was a thorough change for them; it was perfectly heavenly. He, roused and exhilarated, joined in and improved upon her account. And yet, under all the forced joy, under the feverish exaggeration of their talk, there was plainly perceptible the profound tedium, the torture of idleness, that had racked these two old folks ever since their arms, suddenly becoming inert, had begun to get out of order by disuse, like old machinery thrown aside as waste iron.
At length Lise ventured on the subject of her visit.
"Uncle, they tell me that the other day you had a talk with Buteau."
"Buteau is a thorough beast!" cried Fouan, suddenly infuriated, and not giving her time to finish. "If he wasn't as pig-headed as a carroty-haired donkey, should I ever have had that bother with Fanny?"
This first disagreement with his children he had so far kept to himself, but, in his bitterness of heart, the allusion had now escaped him.
On entrusting Delhomme with Buteau's share, he had intended to rent it out at eighty francs a hectare, while Delhomme purposed simply paying a double allowance: two hundred francs for his own share, and two hundred for the other. That was fair, and the old man was the more angry because he had been in the wrong.
"What bother?" asked Lise. "Don't the Delhommes pay you?"
"Oh, yes!" replied Rose. "Every three months, at the stroke of twelve, the money is there on the table. Only there are ways and ways of paying, aren't there? And my old man, being sensitive, would like people to behave at least decently. Whereas, since this worry about Buteau's share, Fanny comes to us with the same air as she would go to the process-server, as if she were being cheated."
"Yes," added the old man, "they do pay, and that's about all. I don't think that enough. There's a certain consideration due. Their money don't pay off everything, does it? We're mere creditors now, nothing more. And yet we're wrong to grumble. If they'd all of them pay."
He broke off, and an awkward silence fell. This allusion to Hyacinthe, who hadn't handed in a copper, but was mortgaging his share bit by bit, and getting drunk on the proceeds, wrung the heart of his mother, who was always impelled to defend that darling scamp of hers. She dreaded lest this other sore point should be laid bare, and so she hastily resumed:
"Don't go fretting yourself about trifles! What's the odds so long as we're happy? Enough's as good as a feast."
She had never opposed her husband like this before, and he looked at her fixedly.
"Your tongue runs too fast, old woman. I don't mind being happy, but I won't be worried."
She shrank into herself again, huddling lazily together on her chair while he finished his bread, rolling the last mouthful over and over to prolong the recreation. The dull room sank to sleep.
"I wanted to know," went on Lise, "what Buteau means to do with regard to me and his child? I haven't worried him much hitherto, but it's time to settle one way or the other."
The two old people uttered not a word. She then questioned the father pointedly.
"As you saw him, he must have mentioned me. What did he say?"
"Nothing. He never opened his lips on the subject. And, in fact, there's nothing to be said. The priest's pestering me to arrange things, as if anything could be arranged so long as the fellow refuses to accept his share."
Lise pondered in great perplexity.
"You think he'll accept some day?"
"It's still possible."
"And you think he'd marry me?"
"There's a chance of it."
"Then you'd recommend me to wait?"
"Why, that depends on yourself. Everybody acts as they feel."
She was silent, unwilling to speak of Jean's proposal, and not knowing how to get a definite answer. Finally she made a last effort.
"You can well understand that I'm sick of not knowing what to expect after all this time. I want a yes or a no. Suppose, uncle, you went and asked Buteau? Do!"
Fouan shrugged his shoulders.
"To begin with, I'll never speak to the skunk again. And then, my girl, how simple you are! Why make a stubborn fool like that say no, who'd always say no afterwards. Leave him free to say yes some day, if it's to his interest."
"To be sure!" concluded Rose, simply, once more the echo of her husband.
Lise could get nothing more definite out of them. She left them, shutting the door upon the room, which relapsed into its benumbed condition; and the house seemed empty once more.
In the meadows on the banks of the Aigre, Jean and his two haymakers had begun the first stack. It was Françoise who built it up. Placed on a heap in the centre, she disposed circularly around her the forkfuls of hay which the young man and Palmyre brought her. Little by little the stack grew bigger and higher, she being always in the midst, and filling up the hollow in which she stood with bundles of hay as soon as the wall around her rose up to her knees. The rick was now beginning to take shape. It was already more than two yards high, and Palmyre and Jean had to raise their forks on high. The work did not proceed without the accompaniment of loud laughter, inspired by the exhilaration of the open air, and by the jests bandied to and fro amid the sweet-scented hay. Françoise, whose handkerchief had slipped down off the back of her head, which was bare to the sun, and whose hair was in disarray and entangled with grass and withered flowers—was in the happiest of moods amid that growing pile in which she was plunged up to her thighs. She buried her bare arms in the mass; every bundle tossed up from below covered her with a shower of stalks; and at times she vanished from sight and pretended to come to grief among the eddies.
"Oh, good gracious! There's something pricking me!"
"Whereabouts?"
"Under my petticoats; up here."
"It's a spider. Hold hard! keep your legs together."
And the laughter grew louder, at improper jests that made them split their sides.
Delhomme, in the distance, was disturbed, and turned his head for an instant but without ceasing to ply his scythe. Oh, yes! a lot of work that little chit must be doing, playing like that! Now-a-days girls were spoiled, and only worked to amuse themselves. He went on, laying the swath low with hurried strokes, and leaving a clear wake behind him. The sun sank in the heavens, the mowers broadened the gaps they had made. Victor, although he had left off hammering his blade, evinced no particular haste; and as La Trouille went by with her geese, he slily slipped off, and ran to meet her under shelter of a thick line of willows that edged the stream.
"Aha!" cried Jean; "he prefers something else to mowing."
Françoise burst into a fresh guffaw.
"He's too old for her," said she.
"Too old! Listen, and you'll hear them."
Then he began to coo so funnily and successfully that Palmyre, holding her stomach as if she were griped by colic, said:
"What's come to that fellow Jean to-day? Isn't he funny?"
The forkfuls of grass were being flung up higher and higher, and the stack was steadily growing.
They joked about Lequeu and Berthe, who had eventually sat down. Most likely she was having herself tickled at a respectful distance with a straw. But let the schoolmaster set the pastry to bake as much as he liked, he wouldn't have the eating of it.
"Isn't he dirty!" repeated Palmyre, who couldn't laugh, and was consequently suffocating.